The truth: "far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe."

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.
A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

January 10, 2009

This war is so repetitive. It reminds me of Lebanon 1982, 1996 and 2006. It reminds me a little of the incursions into the West Bank of 2002, but it's so much bloodier. However the Israel apologists and their excuses sound exactly the same as they have since the IDF bombed refugee camps in the early 70s. It's always the fault of the Palestinians, and any civilian deaths are always regrettable, accidental, and completely not the problem of the Israelis.

A hasbara commenter who has flounced off in a huff complained in a parting shot that this blog is repetitive. An earlier, similar person sniffed that I speak in bumperstickers here - so very simplistic, she can't be bothered to argue with me.

Shooting at your enemy when you know he is among civilians is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Using cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs is illegal. Starving a people is also illegal and a war crime. All of these actions increase the hostility and unity of your opponent.

To solve the problem of Hamas rockets, negotiate. Use diplomacy. Recognize that your enemy has won an election and cannot be exterminated through illegal targeted assassinations.

Follow the rule of law.

There is no end game, no positive outcome to Israel's assault on Gaza. Stop it sooner rather than later.

The idea that "Arabs and Jews have always hated each other and there can never be peace" is itself propaganda and untrue. Don't accept it, because it allows Israel to keep on using disastrous war this way.

Oh yes, and I just can't forget '82, 96, 2006 and 2008-9. God help me forgive because forgetting is not working. I am so sad about the deaths of over 200 Palestinian children in the last two weeks. Nothing Hamas does excuses or justifies killing Palestinian children. Oh, by the way, that last sentence is not me talking, that's those pesky Geneva Conventions again. They wrote them for a reason: because 'nice' warriors commit atrocities. Cut it out!

January 09, 2009

But what choice did Israel have?” say those in its amen corner in the U.S. “No normal society would tolerate rocket fire on its territory. Hamas left it no option.”

Well, actually, as Jimmy Carter explains from first-hand experience, Israel had plenty of alternatives and chose to ignore them, because it remains locked into the failed U.S.-backed policy of trying to overturn the democratic verdict of the 2006 Palestinian election that made Hamas the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. The primary Israeli-U.S.-European strategy here (tacitly backed by Arab autocrats from Mubarak to Mahmoud Abbas) has been to apply increasingly strict economic sanctions, in the hope that choking off the chances of a decent life for the 1.5 million people of Gaza would somehow force them to reverse their political choice. Collective punishment, in other words. So, even when Hamas observed a cease-fire between June and November, Israel refused to open the border crossings. When the exchange of fire began again on November 5 when Israel raided what it said was a Hamas tunnel, Hamas escalated its rocket fire but made clear that it would restore and extend the cease-fire if Israel agreed to open the border crossings. Israel’s answer, Carter explains, was if Hamas ceased firing, Israel would allow 15% of the normal traffic of goods into Gaza. And it’s any surprise that Hamas was not prepared to settle for just a 15% loosening of the economic stranglehold?

Note that in comments at Tony's blog, somebody says his feelings are hurt because Tony referred to IDF butchery. Tony promised to change the word to "accidental massacre."

It's quite rich that a defender of the military which just massacred so many civilians, in violation of the laws of war, would claim in public that his feelings are hurt by a reporter's use of a word - and then expect that reporter to change his language.

My feelings are hurt at the deaths of so many Arab children, and I'm grateful, pathetically grateful, to any non-Arab journalist willing to speak of it as the crime it is.

January 05, 2009

Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?

Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.

Eno is the avante-garde guitarist whose album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts brought my split musical worlds together in the 80s. Now he nails the horrors of Gaza, the complexity and ambiguity of Israeli motivations.
You can download, legally, tracks from the album at this site.

"The liberation from fear (after Israel left Lebanon in 2000) was an important turning point in the lives of the Arabs. We are not scared any more. They may kill us and kill our children and we will not be scared anymore. Only angrier.

We also liberated ourselves from shame. We used to walk with our heads down and hide behind our powerlessness to avoid taking action. We were subdued. We blamed ourselves. We did not have faith. We despised ourselves and all the Arabs. We wanted to be something else, someone else. Now, we want to be ourselves. They can kill us, they can kill our children, and they can destroy all the buildings and all the schools. They cannot kill our spirit anymore.

And we also liberated ourselves from the West. It used to matter so much to us: we were always seeking the West’s approval. If their media said that we should make peace on Israeli terms, we parroted them and believed it. We wanted the West’s endorsement, as if this endorsement made us a little bit like them. We were always ready to change our course, to change our beliefs in order to appear like them, in order to please the writers on CNN and BBC and Time and Newsweek. We wanted them to think of us as “civilized”. And when they did not see the injustice in what the Israelis did, we did not see it either. They called us backwards and we called ourselves backwards.

Now we don’t care anymore. We know we are right. We know they are ignorant, superficial and self-centered. We know they change their opinions everyday. We know they would always find something wrong with us, unless we become subservient, submissive and docile.
Now we are strong.

Their blows cannot hurt us. Do you see all these little children torn to pieces by Israeli bombs? They are not dead: each one of them has given life to a hundred, a thousand, a million partisan who will continue the struggle.”

‘In order to win, all Palestinians have to do is to survive’. They survive and they are indeed winning.

That's one of the least incendiary statements in the piece. My Arab readers won't be surprised. Some of my other readers will be offended. I think he's on the money.

I wrote the following in a comment, before I read Atzmon's piece:
"the Palestinians know how to endure. They are not going to be exterminated and they are not going to go away. No matter how much Israel throws at them, no matter how many (Palestinians) Israel kills, Israel can win no victory in this war. Perhaps that's why the apologizers for Israel sound so desperate."

December 31, 2008

Barbara Lubin of the Middle East Children's Alliance has been raising money and bringing medicine to the children of Palestine and Iraq for nearly two decades. I am proud to live in the same bioregion with Ms. Lubin and her organization. She and MECA are now bringing a special emergency shipment of medication to Gaza (I'm not clear on how they are going to get past the Israeli blockade). She writes the following letter. Read it and click through to donate:

"I will be leaving next week to meet our Gaza
Director Dr. Mona El-Farra in Egypt to
receive five tons of
medicine for infants and children that we
purchased and had shipped from Holland. We
will also purchase emergency supplies from a
Palestinian pharmaceutical company in Cairo
to help treat the thousands who have
been wounded in the horrific Israeli attacks.

"As soon as I return, I will begin working on
another shipment of medical aid to
Gaza.

"While we watch in horror as Israel's bombs
kill and maim children in their homes and
their schools, we can do something
that will truly make a difference.

"Dr. El-Farra, all the people she works with
in Gaza, and the thousands of families they
serve, join me in asking for your support at
this terrible time to help save the
lives and health of thousands of
children."

Cookbooks

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for EveryoneIndispensable - I use it all the time, and give it as presents to brides, young people starting out, etc. Not for vegetarians only - hence the title - a great resource for anybody wanting delicious recipes for vegetables, grains and legumes. Great sauces and salads, too.